Dennis Bombardier, one year later

Recently, I went with my friends Lucy and Sylvie to bring flowers to the small cemetery in the eastern towns where Denise Bombardier is buried. There is no tombstone with her name on it yet: this is the first time in her life that my friend Denise has been discreet.

A year ago yesterday, Denise passed away. She was so full of life.

As I stood in the shade of these beautiful trees, I thought about how impactful Denise's legacy was. How much we miss her, I miss her.

black in white

Not a week goes by without you, readers. Newspaper She loved it so much, he told me about it. We would have loved to read her about the ugliness of Montreal, or the French election issues, or the ignorance of anti-Israel activists or the stupidity of the non-gendered groups in Jimo (who fortunately changed their minds at the after party).

At the moment when two American candidates, aged 78 and 81, are competing to see who is the most frail, I can't help but think how far Denise, 82, was in her right mind!

Yesterday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation re-posted “The Great Interviews with Denise Bombardier” online, after having removed it from the archives a year ago. Thankfully, the lyrics are worthy of praise: “As an interviewer, this cultured woman rubbed shoulders with the great intellectuals of her time, great authors, and political figures who made the news.”

I listened to these interviews yesterday, amazed at Denise's listening skills (a quality that is lacking) and her erudition. She talks about the oil crisis with Raymond Aron and the constitution with Pierre Elliott Trudeau with equal ease. I was particularly interested in the two literary interviews that Radio-Canada rebroadcast.

Dennis devotes half an hour to an interview with the Italian writer Alberto Moravia. Their open discussion of the mystery of faith and the role of the writer is fascinating.

In a 1982 interview from the show, Black in white, Dennis talks to writer Marie-Claire Blaise. “Few people care about art, and even fewer about writing,” Blaise tells her, hiding behind a lock of her hair.

Two chairs, a table, two guests. Can you imagine that today, an interview without decorations, without forced laughter, without an audience, without a stage? People who write books about their books are asked questions by an interviewer who has read their books?

Culture with small C

Funny coincidence, Radio Canada announced this week the arrival of a new open bookcurated by Mariana Maza. Among the questions this “literary magazine” will ask are: “What is in the library of France Damour? Or Lydia Bouchard? Why do we sleep when we read? Do horror books affect the mentally ill? What allows a prisoner to read? What attracts children to the cover of a book?”

I can already imagine the fiery column Denis would have written about what literature has become at Radio-Canada!